The scam scum

EXAMINER EDITORIAL WRITER

Published 4:00 am, Monday, November 3, 1997

1997-11-03 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- OPPONENTS of capital punishment may be willing to consider certain exceptions after reading reporter Anastasia Hendrix's series in The Examiner last week on the avaricious home-loan creeps who steal with pens instead of guns. But almost everybody - the oblivious public, the poll-driven politicians, the honest mortgage brokers, the overwhelmed prosecutors and even, yes, the press - shares the blame for looking the other way while old folks, widows and other trusting people lose their life savings.

This is a strange decade. Bicycle theft and pizza larceny can become the third-strike crimes that send two-bit crooks to $40,000-per-year prison cells for 27 years to life. But far too little is done to investigate, prosecute and punish the loan officers who dress nicely, attend church regularly, worry aloud about crime in the streets and think nothing of, say, a concealed charge of $9,000 up front for a $100,000 home equity loan in Oakland. In that case, monthly payments were $600 - $20 more than the elderly victim's Social Security checks.

A 1996 law authored by state Sen. Teresa Hughes, D-Inglewood, allows California counties to raise fees for recording real estate documents and allocate the funds to district attorneys for real estate fraud units. Most counties did nothing. It's an old story. District attorneys talk solemnly about cracking down on white-collar crime, but the reality is pressure by public and the press to deal with crimes involving homicide, assaults, drugs, robberies, rape and the like.

Gov. Wilson, he of the tough-on-crime rhetoric, vetoed this month a Hughes bill that would have required a third-party review of home-improvement loans to the elderly.

President Trump addresses nation after mass shooting at Florida SchoolWhite House

This is mystifying. Few crimes leave so broad a paper trail as home equity loan fraud, and the benefits of serious prosecution are demonstrated by a unit of nine lawyers and investigators in Los Angeles County. Last year, 114 cases with 236 victims and more than $18 million in estimated rip-offs led to 11 criminal convictions. This year, the losses of 13,000 potential victims are estimated at $300 million.

We wish we could report similar success in the Bay Area. Not until August, however, did the San Francisco Board of Supervisors vote to start collecting the extra recorder fees, a step taken in Alameda County in January 1996. Neither county has yet formed a unit to deal specifically with the slimy thieves in $1,000 suits who win the confidence of needy homeowners and leave them in a state of humiliation and financial ruin.

Related Stories

OK, OK, we're willing to back off on the death penalty for home-improvement loan fraud. But we see no reason why District Attorney Terence Hallinan - and all the other DAs who claim overload on crimes of violence - doesn't do something immediately about the pitiless evildoers who lie, steal and cheat the vulnerable people whose chief fault is, or was, misplaced trust. &lt;